Rendering meshes with multiple indices

Question

I have some vertex data. Positions, normals, texture coordinates. I probably loaded it from a .obj file or some other format. Maybe I\'m drawing a cube. But each piece of ve

Answer 1

I found a way that allows you to reduce this sort of repetition that runs a bit contrary to some of the statements made in the other answer (but doesn't specifically fit the question asked here). It does however address my question which was thought to be a repeat of this question.

I just learned about Interpolation qualifiers. Specifically "flat". It's my understanding that putting the flat qualifier on your vertex shader output causes only the provoking vertex to pass it's values to the fragment shader.

This means for the situation described in this quote:

So if you have a cube, where each face has its own normal, you will need to replicate the position and normal data a lot. You will need 24 positions and 24 normals, even though the cube will only have 8 unique positions and 6 unique normals.

You can have 8 vertexes, 6 of which contain the unique normals and 2 of normal values are disregarded, so long as you carefully order your primitives indices such that the "provoking vertex" contains the normal data you want to apply to the entire face.

EDIT: My understanding of how it works: